Tuesday, April 19, 2005

"Silver lining"

Please post this anonymously. Obviously, since I qualified to be attoday's All Managers Meeting, I serve at the pleasure of the Director.

The Director was all about good news today at the All Managers Meeting.One of his more interesting citations was a recent spike in LANLpublications. Referring to it as a "silver lining" in the cloud of theshutdown, he remarked that a lot of scientists must have busiedthemselves with analyzing and writing up their data during the shutdown.Then, as he turned to the next subject, the Director commented (withoutexplanation) that the volume of publications was up "largely because ofthe restructuring of the work schedule." Huh? Was he alleging thatkilling 9/80 resulted in the recovery of so much work time that we'reall-of-a-sudden publishing more?

What Nanos says is not true. Publications are now down. He is fullof it. Go to Phys Rev online and simply count the papers from LANL from Jan 01 2004 to April 2004 and Jan 01 2005 to April 2005.I think we all know how much you cantrust what Nanos says.

I was there too, and the "restructuring of the work schedule" comment floored me as well. I looked round the room because I couldn't believe it and thought I must have mis-heard it, and there were many jaws hanging open in disbelief.

His Tough talk, including threatening to fire anyone unwilling to comply with the rules, has earned Nanos the respect of Congress and DOE officials. Abraham noted Tuesday in his comments that McSlarrow and Brooks are impressed with the corrective actions Nanos has taken.

Brooks told Congress last week that Nanos' actions are "about the only silver lining I've got in this cloud so far."

"Every time my site manager thought of something else that ought to be done, the laboratory director had already started doing it," Brooks said.

Most of the (publishing-type) scientists in my division did not use the 9-80.Doesn't it take a few years for publications to catch up with the experimental work? Publications will be down in the future because of the demoralization of the Lab in 2004- 2005 (2006??).

Analyzing and writing up your data was a firable offense during the work stoppage. Thus by these comments Nanos is praising people for ignoring his explicit orders and "not taking the standdown seriously" by focusing on getting the job done instead of "safety and security". Or is Nanos looking for people to dumb enough to admit this so he can fire them after the fact?

I write most of my publication material on a laptop at home (it's quieter there than work). The elimination of 9-80 didn't help me one bit. In fact, I now don't have my every other Friday of peace to sit at home and write (which, given the lack of a well defined work-at-home policty, I can't have in the current environment).

PhysRev notwithstanding, the "spike" in publications from LANL during CY 2004 is real. As Casey Stengel was fond of saying, "you could look it up" on SciSearch. HOWEVER, my caveat would be a different Stengel-era quote, this one from Brooklyn - "just wait till next year".

I thought the 9/80 would be back in May in some form. I have not heard anything in weeks. If they want morale to improve, the 9/80 will help. When we had the 9/80, a lot of people put in long hours knowing they had that extra day every two weeks. Has anyone heard anything?